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Monday, 20 April 2015

Bridewell, Bedlam and Bluecoats - by Ann Swinfen

If you were
a pauper in Tudor England, how could you survive? Or would you survive at all?

Throughout
the Middle Ages, there had been two principal supports for the poor – the
church and the rich citizen. Almsgiving was part of general church policy, but
the mainstay for the poor consisted of the monastic institutions, which
provided medical care for the sick, temporary lodgings for wandering labourers
and craftsmen seeking work, and more permanent housing for the aged and infirm.
The more generous-hearted of the aristocracy and gentry handed out leftover
food and sometimes discarded clothing and small coins to the poor of their
neighbourhoods.

This system
of aid was in contrast to a series of laws which regarded the poor as a blight
on society, needing to be dealt with severely. These laws had developed during
the period of social disruption following the Black Death, and were to be
extended during the Tudor period. There was some compassion for those who were
genuinely disabled or infirm, who might be given a licence to beg at certain
locations within their own parishes, though this was hardly a generous provision
for the poor, depending as it did upon voluntary gifts by other parishioners.

The paupers
who did not fall into the category of the ‘deserving poor’ were labelled
‘sturdy beggars’, no distinction being made between those who were lawless
vagrants through circumstance or choice, and those who were merely unemployed
and seeking work. The harsh solution to dealing with such people was a period
in the stocks or a public whipping (or both). The victim would then be forcibly
returned to his parish, which was hardly a solution for those who had left home
in order to seek work. Repeated offences could result in more severe penalties,
such as the loss of an ear or branding.

Parishes
were so reluctant to take on the responsibility for the poor that cruel
practices were not unknown. There are documented cases of unmarried or vagrant
pregnant women being hastily dragged off by the constables to a neighbouring parish before giving
birth, so that the baby would become the responsibility of the latter.

With the
dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, the system of welfare which they had
provided collapsed completely. What had been a minor problem throughout the
country escalated in a few years to disastrous proportions. It was further
aggravated by the early period of enclosures, when large landowners – and
sometimes wealthy townsmen with an eye to a profitable venture – began to fence
in and seize control of the ‘commons’, the pastures and village fields which
were held in common by the peasant community of a village. Deprived of their
only means of a livelihood, these unexpectedly impoverished peasants flocked to the
towns, and especially to London,
in the hope of finding employment.

Suddenly
there was a huge proportion of the population which was dispossessed and
poverty-stricken. Something needed to be done.

Unfortunately,
the old perceptions remained. The poor were still classified as either sturdy
beggars or the deserving poor, the latter being those who were old, frail, or
disabled. Provision was therefore made with this distinction in mind.

Medical Care

Various
issues had to be addressed. Medical care was needed for those who could not afford
the services of a private physician. Given the terrible epidemics which swept
through the country, particularly London,
it was quickly recognised that this had a high priority. The monasteries had
established two hospitals in London, providing
medical care for the sick and hospices for the permanently infirm: St
Bartholomew’s north of the river, just outside the western City wall, and St Thomas’s south of the
river, in Southwark. The city authorities persuaded Henry VIII to allow them to
take over St Bartholomew’s and reopen it under the governance of London in 1547. It took a
little longer to re-establish St
Thomas’s, which reopened in the reign of Henry’s son,
Edward VI, in 1551. Both hospitals play a part in my Christoval Alvarez series.

These two
hospitals cared both for the destitute and for the working poor from Tudor
times onward, and both are still major hospitals to this day, although they no
longer retain their additional function as almshouses. Both were originally
founded in the twelfth century, and St Bartholomew’s is the oldest hospital in Europe, possibly in the world.

St Bartholomew the Great gatehouse

Further
care for the deserving poor came in the form of the many individual almshouses for
the old and infirm established during this period. A few were built by towns or
guilds, but more were the gift of charitable individuals. Many are still in
existence.

Children

A
particular group of the helpless poor were the children, especially orphans and
foundlings, although it was recognised that there were also children whose
parents simply could not support them. The frequent epidemics of killer
diseases led to a large number of orphans living as street children. Unwanted
babies were abandoned on doorsteps and in public privies. Children were
exploited by beggars who used them to illicit sympathy. In times of hardship
and starvation, such as the famine years of the 1590s, poor families could not
feed their children. What was to be done about this growing problem of
destitute babies and children? Those who managed to survive swarmed in the
streets as beggars and potential criminals. It was an acute crisis.

King
Edward VI wrote to the Lord Mayor of London,
asking him:

to take out of the streets
all the fatherless children, and other poor men’s children that were not able
to keep them, and bring them to the late dissolved house of the Greyfriars…where
they should have meat, drink and clothes, lodging and officers to attend upon
them…the sucking children and such as for want of years were not able to learn
should be kept in the country…

Remarkably,
Greyfriars, located in Newgate, across the street from Newgate Prison, had not
been torn down, though it was in a derelict state. The Lord Mayor assembled a
committee of thirty solid and benevolent citizens who immediately set to work to
raise funds, repair the buildings and appoint a large staff. The first children
were admitted in November 1552, before winter set in. They were issued with the
famous ‘bluecoat’ uniform of blue tunics and yellow stockings, still worn by
the pupils of Christ’s Hospital school today.

The
site, which can be seen on the Agas map of London,
was huge, incorporating a church, dormitories, quadrangles (like an Oxford or Cambridge
college), and numerous outbuildings, which provided everything necessary for
this model orphanage: bakery, brewery, laundry, and so on. Moreover, there were
to be two schools, a petty school for the small children and a grammar school
for the older ones. These children were not to join the unskilled and indigent
paupers of London
when they left Christ’s. They were trained in basic clerical skills, some were
later apprenticed to craftsmen, some very clever boys would even go on to
university and rise to high positions in the church.

The
numbers were initially to be limited to 250, then 300, but they frequently rose
to as many as 700. From the outset it seems to have been a kindly and humane
home, for cases are recorded where children apprenticed to cruel masters ran
away and came home to Christ’s Hospital. At a time when life could be unbelievably
brutal, Christ’s was an extraordinary exception. The orphanage plays a major part in the fifth Christoval Alvarez novel.

Children
could be given a home, cared for, educated, but what was to be done about the
adult sturdy beggars, the authorities’ nightmare, the nursery of crime?

Sturdy Beggars

BridewellPalace, located near the confluence of the FleetRiver
with the Thames, was one of Henry VIII’s
palaces during the early years of his reign. Later it was used for a time as
the French ambassador’s residence and it was during this period that it formed
the setting for Holbein’s famous trick painting of the two ambassadors (1533).

However,
during the 1550s, when many of these social problems were being tackled in London, Edward VI gave BridewellPalace to the City of London Corporation (1553), to serve a double
purpose as a place of correction for ‘disorderly women’ and an orphanage. By
1556 it was functioning fully as Bridewell Prison, where the sturdy but
troublesome vagrants and beggars – both men and women – were confined and spent
their time employed in useful labour.

The Prospect of Bridewell
John Strype (1720)

Its secondary function as an ‘orphanage’
served to supplement the much more extensive Christ’s Hospital, mainly
providing training and apprenticeships for older boys, apprenticeships which
came to be well regarded. The combined institution was run by a Court of
Governors.

Madmen

There
remained one further group of troublesome citizens – those who were insane, or
were believed to be insane. After the disruption of Henry VIII’s break with Rome, many of the ecclesiastical institutions in London (like the two
hospitals) were destroyed or converted to secular use. Just outside the
northern part of the City wall at Bishopsgate, in the parish of St Botolph,
stood the BethlehemHospital, which had
served a variety of purposes since its foundation in 1247. From the late Middle
Ages it was certainly housing some mentally ill inmates, but – as with St
Bartholomew’s and St Thomas’s
– the ending of ecclesiastical care had led to the collapse of the institution,
which was sorely needed.

In 1546,
the Lord Mayor, Sir John Gresham, petitioned the king to grant BethlehemHospital to the City. Henry VIII was
reluctant, and insisted on retaining possession of the building, although he
granted the City Council ‘the custody, order and governance’ of Bethlehem
Hospital and of its ‘occupants and revenues’ in a charter which came into
effect in 1547, the year of Henry’s death.

The mention
of revenues is significant, because Bedlam, as it was popularly known, did not
provide a free service. Those who could afford it paid for their insane
relatives to be housed in Bedlam. Poorer patients might be confined there if
the courts judged it appropriate and agreed to pay the fees or imposed the fees
on the inmate’s parish. The position of Master was regarded as a sinecure,
which yielded a comfortable income, and little seems to have been done to treat
the inmates, apart from keeping them out of trouble. Contemporary thinking
advised confining them in darkened rooms away from any disturbing stimuli and
shaving their heads once a month to cool the brain. (Compare the confinement in
the dark of Malvolio in Twelfth Night.)
Documents of the period refer to them as ‘the poor’ or ‘the prisoners’, not as
patients.

A later image of shackled inmate of Bedlam

In 1557,
the Court of Governors of Bridewell took over the management of Bedlam as well,
and if inmates of Bridewell were transferred to Bedlam, the Bedlam fees were
paid from BridewellHospital funds. In 1598
the Court of Governors made a long overdue inspection of Bedlam, finding it
neglected and in a disgusting state: ‘it is so loathsomely and filthy kept not
fit for any man to come into the said house’. This in the one fee-paying
hospital in London.

Poor Laws

All through
the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign, and the reigns of Edward VI and Mary,
various acts were passed to try to cope with the growing numbers of the poor.
The introduction of a parish-based Poor Rate in 1547 went some way to provide
for the impotent poor through compulsory contributions from those parishioners
who could pay, the relief being in the form of money, food or clothes. More destitute
paupers might be accommodated in almshouses. However, the treatment of sturdy
beggars grew ever more severe as their numbers increased. Where in the early
part of the period the punishment might be three days in the stocks, it increased
to greater and greater physical punishment, including burning through the ear
or – for a second offence – hanging.

In this
contemporary illustration a beggar is being whipped in the foreground. In the
background, another is being hanged.

Elizabeth’s government finally tackled the problem as a whole, requiring, in
the Poor Act of 1575, that all parishes have institutions similar to Bridewell,
where sturdy beggars could be put to productive work, instead of simply suffering
physical punishment. These institutions were required to keep a supply of ‘wool,
hemp, flax, iron and other stuff’, to provide useful employment. The inmates
did wire-drawing, knitted woollen caps, carded, spun and wove various fibres,
and stuffed mattresses.

The Act for
the Relief of the Poor of 1597 further developed earlier provisions and
established the position of Overseer of the Poor, responsible for the
distribution of poor relief. There were to be two in each parish, appointed for
a year. In addition to distributing poor relief, they were required to estimate
the number of poor in the parish, use this as a basis for setting the poor
rate, and then collect it from the parishioners. (Not a popular job!) This was
followed by the Act for the Relief of the Poor of 1601, which further codified
the duties of each parish. With a few modifications, it remained in force until
the shift from a rural to an industrial society demanded a major overhaul. The
Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was passed after the report by a commission set
up in 1832. Interestingly, the whole act was not repealed until 1967!

Today our
attitudes toward the less fortunate members of society have changed radically.
Some of the treatments meted out in Tudor times seem extraordinarily harsh, yet
life in general was much harsher then. Faced with the collapse of the social
welfare provided by the monasteries, officials and private individuals
struggled to cope with what must have seemed at the time like a serious threat
to peace, safety and health. They did their best. The provision of orphanages
and poor relief by city authorities and Parliament, and the establishment by
individuals of almshouses for the destitute and free grammar schools to educate
poor boys, demonstrate how well they succeeded. The fact that the Elizabethan
Poor Laws survived in part down to our own times speaks volumes for their
achievements.

5 comments:

Fascinating post Ann, thank you. I had not heard of Christ's - if only its obvious success had encouraged more similar places to become established. St Bartholomew's history is also extraordinary. Perhaps The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez can take me out of WWII for my next holiday read.

Always interested in Barts' history, having ended up there decades ago with a dislocated shoulder, but everything I knew before about paupers in Tudor London comes from Mark Twain…there was a most memorable BBC adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper when I was young, with unforgettable haircuts, and I loved reading it to one of my sons some years ago. I'm now feeling thoroughly enlightened, thank you, Ann!

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